The Long Vacation

“No, no, Val,” said Gillian. “Here is a story that Bessie has sent us—really worth having.”

“Mesa! Oh, of course,” was the acclamation.

“And here’s a little thing of mine,” Gillian added modestly, “about the development of the brain.”

At this there was a shout.

“A little thing! Isn’t it on the differential calculus?”

“Really, I don’t see why Rockquay should not have a little rational study!”

“Ah! but the present question is what Rockquay will buy; to further future development it may be, but I am afraid their brains are not yet developed enough,” said Emma Norton.

“Well then, here is the comparison between Euripides and Shakespeare.”

“That’s what you read papa and everybody to sleep with,” said Valetta pertly.

“Except Aunt Lily, and she said she had read something very like it in Schlegel,” added Dolores.

“You must not be too deep for ordinary intellects, Gillian,” said Emma Norton good-naturedly. “Surely there is that pretty history you made out of Count Baldwin the Pretender.”

“That! Oh, that is a childish concern.”

“The better fitted for our understandings,” said Emma, disinterring it, and handing it over to Anna, while Mysie breathed out—

“Oh! I did like it! And, Gill, where is Phyllis’s account of the Jubilee gaieties and procession last year?”

“That would make the fortune of any paper,” said Anna.

“Yes, if Lady Rotherwood will let it be used,” said Gillian. “It is really delightful and full of fun, but I am quite sure that her name could not appear, and I do not expect leave to use it.”

“Shall I write and ask?” said Mysie.

“Oh yes, do; if Cousin Rotherwood is always gracious, it is specially to you.”

“I wrote to my cousin, Gerald Underwood,” said Anna, “to ask if he had anything to spare us, though I knew he would laugh at the whole concern, and he has sent down this. I don’t quite know whether he was in earnest or in mischief.”

And she read aloud—

          “Dreaming of her laurels green,           The learned Girton girl is seen,           Or under the trapeze neat           Figuring as an athlete.           Never at the kitchen door           Will she scrub or polish more;           No metaphoric dirt she eats,           Literal dirt may form her treats.           Mary never idle sits,           Home lessons can’t be learnt by fits;           Hard she studies all the week,           Answers with undaunted cheek.           When to exam Mary goes,           Smartly dressed in stunning clothes,           Expert in algebraic rule,           Best pupil-teacher of her school.           Oh, how clever we are found           Who live on England’s happy ground,           Where rich and poor and wretched may           Be drilled in Whitehall’s favoured way.”

There was a good deal of laughter at this parody of Jane Taylor’s Village Girl, though Mysie was inclined to be shocked as at something profane.

“Then what will you think of this?” said Anna, beginning gravely to read aloud The Inspector’s Tour.

It was very clever, so clever that Valetta and Kitty Varley both listened as in sober earnest, never discovering, or only in flashes like Mysie, that it was really a satire on all the social state of the different European nations, under the denomination of schools. One being depicted as highly orthodox, but much given to sentence insubordination to dark cold closets; another as given to severe drill, but neglecting manners; a third as repudiating religious teaching, and now and then preparing explosions for the masters—no, teachers. The various conversations were exceedingly bright and comical; and there were brilliant hits at existing circumstances, all a little in a socialistic spirit, which made Anna pause as she read. She really had not perceived till she heard it in her own voice and with other ears how audacious it was, especially for a school bazaar.

Dolores applauded with her whole heart, but owned that it might be too good for the Mouse-trap, it would be too like catching a monkey! Gillian, more doubtfully, questioned whether it would “quite do”; and Mysie, when she understood the allusions, thought it would not. Emma Norton was more decided, and it ended by deciding that the paper should be read to the elders at Clipstone, and their decision taken before sending it to Uncle Lance.

The spirits of the Muscipula party rose as they discussed the remaining MSS., but these were not of the highest order of merit; and Anna thought that the really good would be sufficient; and all the Underwood kith and kin had sufficient knowledge of the Press through their connection with the ‘Pursuivant’ to be authorities on the subject.

“Fergus has some splendid duplicate ammonites for me and bits of crystal,” said Mysie.

“Oh, do let Fergus alone,” entreated Gillian. “He is almost a petrifaction already, and you know what depends on it.”

“My sister is coming next week for a few days,” said Anna. “She is very clever, and may help us.”

Emilia was accordingly introduced to the Mice, but she was not very tolerant of them. Essay societies, she said, were out of date, and she thought the Rockquay young ladies a very country-town set.

“You don’t know them, Emmie,” said Anna. “Gillian and Dolores are very remarkable girls, only—”

“Only they are kept down by their mothers, I suppose. Is that the reason they don’t do anything but potter after essay societies and Sunday-schools like our little girls at Vale Leston? Why, I asked Gillian, as you call her, what they were doing about the Penitents’ Home, and she said her mother and Aunt Jane went to look after it, but never talked about it.”

“You know they are all very young.”

“Young indeed! How is one ever to be of any use if mothers and people are always fussing about one’s being young?”

“One won’t always be so—”

“They would think so, like the woman of a hundred years old, who said on her daughter’s death at eighty, ‘Ah, poor girl, I knew I never should rear her!’ How shall I get to see the Infirmary here?”

“Miss Mohun would take you.”

“Can’t I go without a fidgety old maid after me?”

“I’ll tell you what I wish you would do, Emmie. Write an account of one of your hospital visits, or of the match-girls, for the Mouse-trap. Do! You know Gerald has written something for it.”

“He! Why he has too much sense to write for your voluntary schools. Or it would be too clever and incisive for you. Ah! I see it was so by your face! What did he send you? Have you got it still?”

“We have really a parody of his which is going in—The Girton Girl. Now, Emmie, won’t you? You have told me such funny things about your match-girls.”

“I do not mean to let them be turned into ridicule by your prim, decorous swells. Why, I unfortunately told Fernan Brown one story—about their mocking old Miss Bruce with putting on imitation spectacles—and it has served him for a cheval de bataille ever since! Oh, my dear Anna, he gets more hateful than ever. I wish you would come back and divert his attention.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t you think we could change? You could go and let Marilda fuss with you, now that Uncle Clem and Aunt Cherry are so well, and I could look after Adrian, and go to the Infirmary, and the penitents, and all that these people neglect; maybe I would write for the Mouse-trap, if Gerald does when he comes home.”

Anna did not like the proposal, but she pitied Emilia, and cared for her enough to carry the scheme to her aunt. But Geraldine shook her head. The one thing she did not wish was to have Emmie riding, walking, singing, and expanding into philanthropy with Gerald, and besides, she knew that Emilia would never have patience to read to her uncle, or help Adrian in his preparation.

“Do you really wish this, my dear?” she asked.

“N—no, not at all; but Emmie does. Could you not try her?”

“Annie dear, if you wish to have a fortnight or more in town—”

“Oh no, no, auntie, indeed!”

“We could get on now without you. Or we would keep Emmie till the room is wanted; but I had far rather be alone than have the responsibility of Emmie.”

“No, no, indeed; I don’t think Adrian would be good long with her. I had much rather stay—only Emmie did wish, and she hates the—”

“Oh, my dear, you need not tell me; I only know that I cannot have her after next week; the room will be wanted for Gerald.”

“She could sleep with me.”

“No, Annie, I must disappoint you. There is not room for her, and her flights when Gerald comes would never do for your uncle. You know it yourself.”

Anna could not but own the wisdom of the decision, and Emmie, after grumbling at Aunt Cherry, took herself off. She had visited the Infirmary and the Convalescent Home, and even persuaded Mrs. Hablot to show her the Union Workhouse, but she never sent her contribution to the Mouse-trap.

CHAPTER IX. – OUT BEYOND

     Do the work that’s nearest,     Though it’s dull at whiles,     Helping, when we meet them,     Lame dogs over stiles.     See in every hedgerow     Marks of angels’ feet;     Epics in each pebble     Underneath our feet.—C. KINGSLEY.

“Drawing? Well done, Cherie! That’s a jolly little beggar; quite masterly, as old Renville would say,” exclaimed Gerald Underwood, looking at a charming water-colour of a little fisher-boy, which Mrs. Grinstead was just completing.

“‘The Faithful Henchman,’ it ought to be called,” said Anna. “That little being has attached himself to Fergus Merrifield, and follows him and Adrian everywhere on what they are pleased to call their scientific expeditions.”

“The science of larks?”

“Oh dear, no. Fergus is wild after fossils, and has made Adrian the same, and he really knows an immense deal. They are always after fossils and stones when they are out of school.”

“The precious darling!”

“Miss Mohun says Fergus is quite to be trusted not to take him into dangerous places.”

“An unlooked-for blessing. Ha!” as he turned over his aunt’s portfolio, “that’s a stunner! You should work it up for the Academy.”

“This kind of thing is better for the purpose,” Mrs. Grinstead said.

“Throw away such work upon a twopenny halfpenny bazaar! Heaven forefend!”

“Don’t be tiresome, Gerald,” entreated Anna. “You are going to do all sorts of things for it, and we shall have no end of fun.”

“For the sake of stopping the course of the current,” returned Gerald, proceeding to demonstrate in true nineteenth-century style the hopelessness of subjecting education to what he was pleased to call clericalism. “You’ll never reach the masses while you insist on using an Apostle spoon.”

“Masses are made up of atoms,” replied his aunt.

“And we shall be lost if you don’t help,” added Anna.

“I would help readily enough if it were free dinners, or anything to equalize the existence of the classes, instead of feeding the artificial wants of the one at the expense of the toil and wretchedness of the other.”

He proceeded to mention some of the miseries that he had learnt through the Oxford House—dilating on them with much enthusiasm—till presently his uncle came in, and ere long a parlour-maid announced luncheon, just as there was a rush into the house. Adrian was caught by his sister, and submitted, without more than a “Bother!” to be made respectable, and only communicating in spasmodic gasps facts about Merrifield and hockey.

“Where’s Marshall?” asked Gerald at the first opportunity, on the maid leaving the room.

“Marshall could not stand it,” said his aunt. “He can’t exist without London, and doing the honours of a studio.”

“Left you!”

“Most politely he informed me that this place does not agree with his health; and there did not seem sufficient scope for his services since the Reverend Underwood had become so much more independent. So we were thankful to dispose of him to Lord de Vigny.”

“He was a great plague,” interpolated Adrian, “always jawing about the hall-door.”

“Are you really without a man-servant?” demanded Gerald.

“In the house. Lomax comes up from the stables to take some of the work. Some lemonade, Gerald?”

Gerald gazed round in search of unutterable requirements; but only met imploring eyes from aunt and sister, and restraining ones from his uncle. He subsided and submitted to the lemonade, while Anna diverted attention by recurring rather nervously to the former subject.

“And I have got rid of Porter, she kept me in far too good order.”

“As if Sibby did not,” said Clement.

“Aye, and you too! But that comes naturally, and began in babyhood!”

“What have you done with the house at Brompton?”

“Martha is taking care of it—Mrs. Lightfoot, don’t you know? One of our old interminable little Lightfoots, who went to be a printer in London, married, and lost his wife; then in our break-up actually married Martha to take care of his children! Now he is dead, and I am thankful to have her in the house.”

“To frighten loafers with her awful squint.”

“You forgive the rejection of ‘The Inspector’s Tour’? Indeed I think you expected it.”

“I wanted to see whether the young ladies would find it out.”

“No compliment to our genius,” said his aunt.

“I assure you, like Mrs. Bennet, ‘there is plenty of that sort of thing,’” said Anna. “Some of them were mystified, but Gillian and Dolores Mohun were in ecstasies.”

“Ecstasies from that cheerful name?”

“She is the New Zealand niece—Mr. Maurice Mohun’s daughter. They carried it home to their seniors, and of course the verdict was ‘too strong for Rockquay atmosphere,’” said his aunt.

“So it did not even go to Uncle Lance,” said Anna. “Shall you try the ‘Pursuivant’?”

“On the contrary, I shall put in the pepper and salt I regretted, and try the ‘Censor’.”

“Indeed?” observed his uncle, in a tone of surprise.

“Oh,” said Gerald coolly, “I have sent little things to the ‘Censor’ before, which they seem to regard in the light of pickles and laver.”

The ‘Censor’ was an able paper on the side of philosophical politics, and success in that quarter was a feather in the young man’s cap, though not quite the kind of feather his elders might have desired.

“Journalism is a kind of native air to us,” said Mrs. Grinstead, “but from ‘Pur.’”

“‘Pur’ is the element of your dear old world, Cherie,” said Gerald, “and here am I come to do your bidding in its precincts, for a whole long vacation.”

He spoke lightly, and with a pretty little graceful bow to his aunt, but there was something in his eyes and smile that conveyed to her a dread that he meant that he only resigned himself for the time and looked beyond.

“Uncle Lance is coming,” volunteered Adrian.

“Yes,” said Geraldine. “Chorister that he was, and champion of Church teaching that he is, he makes the cause of Christian education everywhere his own, and is coming down to see what he can do inexpensively with native talent for concert, or masque, or something—‘Robin Hood’ perhaps.”

“Ending in character with a rush on the audience?” said Gerald. “Otherwise ‘Robin Hood’ is stale.”

“Tennyson has spoilt that for public use,” said Mrs. Grinstead. “But was not something else in hand?”

“Only rehearsed. It never came off,” said Gerald.

“The most awful rot,” said Adrian. “I would have nothing to do with it.”

“In consequence it was a failure,” laughed Gerald.

“It was ‘The Tempest’, wasn’t it?” said Anna.

“Not really!” exclaimed Mrs. Grinstead.

“About as like as a wren to an eagle,” said Gerald.

“We had it at the festival last winter. The authors adapted the plot, that was all.”

“The authors being—

“The present company,” said Gerald, “and Uncle Bill, with Uncle Lance supplying or adapting music, for we were not original, I assure you.”

“It was when Uncle Clem was ill,” put in Anna, “and somehow I don’t think we took in the accounts of it.”

“No,” said Gerald, “and nobody did it con amore, though we could not put it off. I should like to see it better done.”

“Such rot!” exclaimed Adrian. “There’s an old man, he was Uncle Lance with the great white beard made out of Kit’s white bear’s skin, and he lived in a desert island, where there was a shipwreck—very jolly if you could see it, only you can’t—and the savages—no, the wreckers all came down.”

“What, in a desert island?”

“It was not exactly desert. Gerald, I say, do let there be savages. It would be such a lark to have them all black, and then I’d act.”

“What an inducement!”

“Then somebody turned out to be somebody’s enemy, and the old chap frightened them all with squibs and crackers and fog-horns, till somebody turned out to be somebody else’s son, and married the daughter.”

“If you trace ‘The Tempest’ through that version you are clever,” said Gerald.

“I told you it was awful rot,” said Adrian.

“There’s Merrifield! Excuse me, Cherie.” And off he went.

“The sentiments of the actors somewhat resembled Adrian’s. It was too new, and needed more learning and more pains, so they beg to revert to ‘Robin Hood’. However, I should like to see it well got up for once, if only by amateurs. Miranda has a capital song by Uncle Bill, made for Francie’s soprano. She cuts you all out, Anna.”

“That she does, in looks and voice, but she could not act here in public. However, we will lay it before the Mouse-trap. Was it printed?”

“Lance had enough for the performers struck off. Francie could send some up.”

“After all,” said Cherie, “the desert island full of savages and wreckers is not more remarkable than the ‘still-vex’d Bermoothes’ getting between Argiers and Sicily.”

“It really was one of the Outer Hebrides,” said Gerald, with the eagerness that belonged to authorship, “so that there could be any amount of Scottish songs. Prospero is an old Highland chief, who has been set adrift with his daughter—Francie Vanderkist to wit—and floated up there, obtaining control over the local elves and brownies. Little Fely was a most dainty sprite.”

“I am glad you did not make Ariel an electric telegraph,” said his aunt.

“Tempting, but such profanity in the face of Vale Leston was forbidden, and so was the comic element, as bad for the teetotallers.”

“But who were the wreckers?” asked Anna.

“Buccaneers, my dear, singing songs out of the ‘Pirate’—schoolmaster, organist, and choir generally. They had captured Prospero’s supplanter (he was a Highland chief in league with the Whigs) by the leg, while the exiled fellow was Jacobite, so as to have the songs dear to the feminine mind. They get wrecked on the island, and are terrified by the elves into releasing Alonso, etc. Meantime Ferdinand carries logs, forgathers with Miranda and Prospero—and ends—” He flourished his hands.

“And it wasn’t acted!”

“No, we were getting it up before Christmas,” said Gerald, “and then—”

He looked towards Clement, whose illness had then been at the crisis.

“Very inconsiderate of me,” said Clement, smiling, “as the old woman said when her husband did not die before the funeral cakes were stale. But could it not come off at the festival?”

“Now,” said Gerald, “that the boy is gone, I may be allowed a glass of beer. Is that absurdity to last on here?”

“Adrian’s mother would not let him come on any other terms,” said Mrs. Grinstead.

“Did she also stipulate that he was never to see a horse? Quite as fatal to his father.”

“You need not point the unreason, but consider how she has suffered.”

“You go the way to make him indulge on the sly.”

“True, perhaps,” said Clement, “but I mean to take the matter up when I know the poor little fellow better.”

Gerald gave a little shrug, a relic of his foreign ancestry, and Anna proposed a ride to Clipstone to tell Gillian Merrifield of the idea.

“Eh, the dogmatic damsel that came with you the year we had ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’?”

“Yes, sister to Uncle Bernard’s wife. Do you know Jasper Merrifield? Clever man. Always photographing.”

So off they went, Gerald apparently in a resigned state of mind, and came upon dogs and girls in an old quarry, where Mysie had dragged them to look for pretty stones and young ferns to make little rockeries for the sale of work. ‘The Tempest’ was propounded, and received with acclamation, though the Merrifields declared that they could not sing, and their father would not allow them to do so in public if they could!

Dolores looked on in a sort of silent scorn at a young man who could talk so eagerly about “a trumpery raree-show,” especially for an object that she did not care about. None of them knew how far it was the pride of authorship and the desire of pastime. Only Jasper said when he heard their report—

“Underwood is a queer fellow! One never knows where to have him. Socialist one minute, old Tory the next.”

“A dreamer?” asked Dolores.

“If you like to call him so. I believe he will dawdle and dream all his life, and never do any good!”

“Perhaps he is waiting.”

“I don’t believe in waiting,” said Jasper, wiping the dust off his photographic glasses. “Why, he has a lovely moor of his own, and does not know how to use it!”

“Conclusive,” said Gillian.

CHAPTER X. – NOBLESSE OBLIGE

     The other won’t agree thereto,       So here they fall to strife;     With one another they did fight       About the children’s life.                             Babes in the Wood.

“I say, Aunt Cherry,” said Adrian, “the fossil forest is to be uncovered to-morrow, and Merrifield is going to stay for it, and I’m going down with him.”

“Fossil forest? What, in the Museum?”

“No, indeed. In Anscombe Cove, they call it. There’s a forest buried there, and bits come up sometimes. To-morrow there’s to be a tremendous low tide that will leave a lot of it uncovered, and Merrifield and I mean to dig it out, and if there are some duplicate bits they may be had for the bazaar.”

“Yes, they have been begging Fergus’s duplicates for a collection of fossils,” said Anna. “But can it be safe? A low tide means a high tide, you know.”

“Bosh!” returned Adrian.

“Miss Mohun is sure to know all about the tides, I suppose,” said Clement; “if her nephew goes with her consent I suppose it is safe.”

“If—” said Mrs. Grinstead.

Adrian looked contemptuous, and muttered something, on which Anna undertook to see Miss Mohun betimes, and judge how the land, or rather the sea, lay, and whether Fergus was to be trusted.

It would be a Saturday, a whole holiday, on which he generally went home for Sunday, and Adrian spent the day with him, but the boys’ present scheme was, to take their luncheon with them and spend the whole day in Anscombe Cove. This was on the further side of the bay from the marble works, shut in by big cliffs, which ran out into long chains of rocks on either side, but retreated in the midst, where a little stream from the village of Anscombe, or rather from the moorland beyond, made its way to the sea.

The almanacks avouched that on this Saturday there would be an unusually low tide, soon after twelve o’clock, and Fergus had set his heart on investigating the buried forest that there was no doubt had been choked by the combined forces of river and sea. So Anna found that notice had been sent to Clipstone of his intention of devoting himself to the cove and not coming home till the evening, and that his uncle and aunt did not think there was any danger, especially as his constant henchman, Davie Blake, was going with him, and all the fisher-boys of the place were endowed with a certain instinct for their own tides. The only accident Jane Mohun had ever known was with a stranger.

Anna had no choice but to subside, and the boys started as soon as the morning’s tide would have gone down sufficiently, carrying baskets for their treasures containing their luncheon, and apparently expecting to find the forest growing upright under the mud, like a wood full of bushes.

The cove for which they were bound was on the further side of the chain of rocks, nearly two miles from Rockquay, and one of the roads ran along the top of the red cliffs that shut it in, with no opening except where the stream emerged, and even that a very scanty bank of shingle.

In spite of all assurances, Anna could not be easy about her darling, and when afternoon came, and the horses were brought to the door, she coaxed Gerald into riding along the cliffs in the Anscombe direction, where there was a good road, from whence they could turn down a steep hill into the village, and thence go up a wild moor beyond, or else continue along the coast for a considerable distance.